Tomb Raiding: Unearthing a Millennium-Old Zongzi from the Start!

The seventeenth day of the fifth month in the Gengzi year: a day suited for offerings, consecrating incense, funerals, and breaking ground.

In the Gregorian calendar, July 7, 2020.

That was the day I died.

I died on an antique-bronze dagger.

It plunged in through my chest, pierced my heart on an upward diagonal, and emerged from my back.

The dagger looked mottled with age, yet was unexpectedly sharp. I barely felt any pain. Just a faint chill, and the wound instantly drained all the strength from my body.

Much like the hand gripping the dagger: slender and childlike, yet unexpectedly steady and strong!

I used to imagine how I might die. Any way you looked at it, a scoundrel like me, who had done every wicked thing imaginable, would have deserved it. But this was different.

I felt wronged!

She was just a little girl who looked no older than eleven or twelve.

Besides, only moments earlier, I had been risking my life to save her from this accursed altar.

And now she had stabbed me to death on that very altar with her own hands, letting my blood fill every groove carved into it...

At that moment, I suddenly realized this might all have been a conspiracy from the start.

The little girl in the stone coffin wasn't the sacrifice. I was!